In Slobodskoy, several deputies disrupted the Duma meeting.

      Last night, April 15, the head of Slobodskoye, Irina Zhelvakova, announced on her page that the scheduled meeting of the Duma did not take place. As a result, it was not possible to make a decision on allocating funds for subsidized meals for children in schools and kindergartens, processing areas for ticks, servicing the street lighting system, maintaining cemeteries, preparing for the celebration of Victory Day, and much more.

      Zhelvakova noted that the meeting did not take place because there was no quorum, and four deputies — Vadim Bazhin, Konstantin Smolev, Sergey Malykh, and Mikhail Luchikhin — reported their participation in the meeting but did not show up. The head of the city expressed the opinion that they might have intentionally decided to ignore her report, which was also included in the agenda.

      The chairwoman of the Duma, Zlata Baranova, confirmed the information. According to her, yesterday out of 17 deputies, 13 reported their attendance at the meeting (with a quorum of 11 people), but only nine deputies showed up in the meeting hall. No one informed her about the reasons for their absence. When attempts were made to contact the deputies, three of them cited urgent matters, and one did not answer the call at all.

      Deputy of the Kirov Regional Assembly Roman Titov, who was also present in Slobodskoye yesterday, commented on the situation. He stated that he himself almost never misses meetings of the Assembly (only once when he was in the cardiology department after having coronavirus). Therefore, he cannot understand the behavior of the deputies: “I categorically do not understand the actions of a number of deputies of the Slobodskoye City Duma, who just took and without warning did not come to the next meeting, disrupting the discussion of several important issues for the residents.” Titov added that almost all the “absentees” are employees of one enterprise, and that some of them are members of the LDPR party. Titov asked the coordinator of the regional LDPR branch, Pavel Dorofeev, to look into this matter.

      Today, April 16, a second attempt was made to hold a meeting of the Slobodskoye City Duma. During the broadcast, it was mentioned that Luchikhin attended the meeting, Bazhin and Malykh did not show up but submitted statements for early voting, Smolev did not come and did not submit a statement, only verbally reported that he was absent due to production necessity. In total, nine deputies gathered in the hall, but taking into account the statements for early voting, there were 14 votes, so the meeting did take place.

      Let us remind you that similar scandals previously occurred in Sosnovka. Local deputies have repeatedly ignored Duma meetings.